From the Desk of Jeff King

His strength, or yours?

Rav Sha'ul (apostle Paul) was buffeted by setbacks throughout his ministry. He was shipwrecked, bitten by a viper, stoned, beaten with rods and left for dead at least once. While serving in Asia, he was "burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life (2 Corinthians 1:8)."

Yet Yeshua of Nazareth was faithful to comfort and deliver him in his affliction. Sha'ul wrote to the house church at Corinth: "Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us." Bible commentator Matthew Henry (1662-1714) saw this passage well:

What they did in their distress: They trusted in God. And they were brought to this extremity in order that they should not trust in themselves but in God. Note, God often brings his people into great straits, that they may apprehend their own insufficiency to help themselves, and may be induced to place their trust and hope in his all-sufficiency. Our extremity is God's opportunity. In the mount will the Lord be seen; and we may safely trust in God, who raiseth the dead. God's raising the dead is a proof of his almighty power.

Posted by Jeff King at 09:21 AM | Comments (1)

Courageous faith

Somewhere today a Pakistani teen named Diana is in hiding for her life. A member of a strict Islamic family, she embraced Christianity and survived an attempt on her life by a gun-wielding uncle. Diana didn't come to faith in Christ by sowing a seed to TBN or engaging in hula worship with Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. It didn't take her 40 days to find a purpose. Hearing the gospel from a Christian girl she had met, Diana purposed to risk her life to find new life in the Jewish Messiah.

Diana refused to abandon her new faith when confronted by her family, who beat her repeatedly and demanded she return to Islam, according to WorldNetDaily. She was taken to a canal where her uncle pointed a pistol at her head and gave her one last chance to recant. Diana answered, "You can kill me if you want. I will not leave Christ." Before pulling the trigger, the uncle noticed a black cobra swimming in the canal and threw his niece into the path of the serpent. Diana, who could not swim, miraculously escaped and went into hiding. She told Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian organization that ministers to the persecuted church worldwide, "Jesus was crucified for us. Can we not endure some of the same for Him?"

Yeshua is near

American Christianity craves affluence, not affliction. We don't like our sermons salted with too much gloom. But that's what we find in Psalm 34:18-19 – "The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all."

The Hebrew word for "affliction," ra', implies adversity, distress, grief or harm. It is a harsh word, but the psalmist tempers it with this promise: the LORD is near. The word "near" in Hebrew, qarowb (kaw-robe), can describe a close or intimate relationship, including a next of kin or kinsman. Biblically, a kinsman was a male relative who paid a ransom price to release a destitute family member from debt or bondage. It is a picture of the intimacy we have in Messiah Yeshua, our kinsman redeemer. The LORD purchased us with His own life and adopted us when we were spiritual orphans, without hope and a future.

The words "broken" and "contrite" have almost identical meanings in Hebrew: crush, destroy and shatter. None of us are exempt from suffering. Sometimes the pain is so raw we wonder how we will endure another day. The good news is that God saves and delivers the righteous (tsaddik, meaning just, lawful, or follower of the Lawful One, God Himself) from ALL their afflictions. Not once or twice, but every time. He gives us strength to endure hardships hour by hour or day by day, if necessary. The world does not operate this way. Wounded people often are ignored, exploited and denied compassion, but not with Adonai. The Hebrew word for "save" in our verse is yasha', from which we get Yeshua, the name that represents the LORD'S nature and calling – salvation. Our adversity does not catch God by surprise. He is near – closer than we think or feel – to offer relief and restoration to those who trust in Him.

The blessing

Why did God create man, knowing in advance he would sin and generally make a mess of things? What kept Him from crushing man in his rebellion and wiping him off the face of the earth? A friend who pastors a Messianic congregation pondered those very questions during a time of prayer and reflection, and this is how God answered: Because I knew it would be a blessing for you to know Me.

God chose to love us in our filth and depravity, sending His Son, Yeshua of Nazareth, to atone for our transgressions. Not only that, God fills believers with His Spirit and sends us His Word to draw us into intimacy and fellowship. By reading the Word, which comes alive through the Spirit, God reveals to us His attributes and character. Therein lies the blessing.

In 2 Chronicles 30, Adonai even bends His own rules in order to restore fellowship. The story unfolds with King Hezekiah sending messengers throughout Judah and Israel to invite his brethren to a long overdue Passover celebration in Jerusalem. He exhorts the Israelites, "The Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn His face from you if you return to Him." Some tribesmen mock and laugh at the messengers. Yet God gives those who participate a "singleness of heart to obey the command of the king and the leaders, at the word of the Lord." A great assembly gathers for Passover in the second month, a belated celebration because the priests had not had time to consecrate themselves. Neither are the people ceremonially clean and they eat Passover "contrary to what was written." Hezekiah attempts to appease God by praying, "May the good Lord provide atonement for everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary."

Verse 20 says God listened to the king of Judah and healed the people. The word "healed" in Hebrew means to mend, repair, make whole. God cut His people a break because He longed to have fellowship with them. The Israelites respond by celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread an additional seven days with great gladness. Why is their joy complete? Maybe it is because they got to know Him. They were blessed because they saw His nature and character – compassion, grace, mercy and truth (Psalm 86:15).

Timely word?

This early Christian Psalter was unearthed by a bulldozer in Ireland (National Museum of Ireland).

The National Museum of Ireland scrambled Thursday to clarify the wording of an ancient Psalter discovered July 20. A construction worker found the manuscript buried in a bog, opened to Psalm 83. The museum said the passage refers to the "vale of tears" rather than the wiping out of Israel as originally announced. The text is from the Latin Vulgate, which numbers psalms differently than modern Bible translations. Psalm 83 in the Vulgate is actually Psalm 84.

Many commentators initially linked the Psalm 83 discovery to the growing crisis in the Middle East. When you read Psalm 83 in today's translations, Israel is petitioning God for protection against a militant Arab confederacy. With rockets raining on Haifa and Israeli army casualties climbing in southern Lebanon, some speculated that God had preserved the book, written about 800 AD, to be a timely word for today.

Perhaps it still is. The text visible on the manuscript refers to the valley of Baka, where Israelites would refresh themselves while traveling to Jerusalem for a pilgrim feast. The root Baka means to "weep by reason of joy or sorrow, the latter including lament, complaint, remorse or repentance," according to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. The location could be the present-day Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold and suspected hiding place for Iraqi WMD. Israel launched a military offensive today near Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley.

Psalms 83 and 84 seem to be in harmony, and possibly point to God's end-day plans for Israel: the destruction of Edom (the terrorist confederacy trying to destroy the Jewish state) and establishment of Ezekiel's temple, which will draw pilgrims to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles during the millennial reign of Messiah (Zechariah 14:16). Perhaps the Lord arranged the manuscript confusion to call attention to both Psalms.

Archaeologists are heralding the find as Ireland's equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The worker spotted the book, written on vellum, just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer. The document survived because a quick-thinking land owner covered it in damp soil to prevent deterioration from exposure. "There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out," museum director Pat Wallace said in an Associated Press report. "First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."

Addendum – An Israeli air raid on Baalbek damaged the ancient Roman temple of Bacchus, the god of wine and licentiousness. In 168 BC, Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the Jerusalem Temple and forced Jews to worship Bacchus, among other deities. That sparked the Maccabean revolt that led to Judah's liberation and rededication of the Temple.